April 24th, 2013

Wires and Stars: Initiation (Complete!) @ 08:44 pm

Okay, sorry I've been so totally out of contact. I'm mostly on my Tumblr right now because my fandom is most active there, as much as I'd rather it be here or on DW.

But anyway. We (titianArchivist and myself) have completed the first "book" of Wires and Stars, our Sollux/Psiioniic epicfic, and I have all these rambly thoughts to tell you sometime about creativity and how awesome it is to have a creative partner because this is the only novel-length work I've both completed and been genuinely happy with completing (same for Titian), and it's making me think about the possibility of going back towards writing as a career.

The series isn't finished, but the first part is finally out the gate. All seventeen chapters of it. WITH FANART ALL OVER THE PLACE, oh my god. Not by us, but by people who actually draw, wow.

Story contains pseudo-incest [of the "characters are genetically related but don't have a human-style family relationship" variety], body horror, angst, hurt/comfort, age difference, mental health issues... let's just say our motto is "everything is beautiful and everything hurts", and we're dedicated to both dealing with really dark material and being ultimately kind to our readers as a baseline. It's an attempt to tell an ultimately hopeful story in a crapsack world.

We have an authorial policy, in response to a number of concerned questions: ask directly for spoilers if you need them. Fanfiction should be fun! It should be fun for everyone, at every level of narrative surprise comfort or lack thereof!

If you want to skip to the smut, we also wrote fingers of light, a 12k smutty one-shot that takes place just before the last chapter of Initiation. It's somewhat spoilery for the story arc of Initiation, but if you're a skip-to-the-smut sort of person (no shame in that!) you probably don't mind.

Still need to write up the FAQ of "things you need to know about Homestuck to make our fic comprehensible if you're not a Homestuck reader", but as a general principle, most of them are the sort of thing you'll know if someone has told you about Homestuck at length and if you keep the wiki handy: we're trying very hard with this to make it relatively accessible to non-Homestuck fans. And, if you're a non-Homestuck who wants to read it and is waiting on said FAQ, please let me know! It'll give me motivation to work harder. :-)

Well, thank you for mentioning that! Like I said, I'm trying to make it accessible to people who aren't Homestuck canon readers - I know more than one person who reads fic in fandoms outside their own, but Homestuck is usually a little hard to follow for various reasons - and knowing there are people like you who aren't fond of the canon but would be interested in reading the fic motivates me more to work on the guide. ^_^

I liked what I read of the canon a whole lot! I just found the sheer size of canon daunting and impossible to keep track of, which was why I eventually gave up -- I couldn't keep up anymore. I occasionally try the fic here and there, as Homestuck fic is a great source of xeno, and I will read pretty much anything for good xeno. :)

I should go back and try Homestuck canon again, I think. But if you're really writing a guide, that would be awesome. Maybe I'll try your fic, although I only vaguely remember who the Psiioniic is. I am glad you feel good having written it, though. It is good to feel good about writing! :)